Worth All The Pain
by TheAsterousAuthor
Summary: Cameron once told her to let him know if she found out whether love was worth it or not. Kirsten figures it out, but it's too late. - Post S1 angsty Camsten oneshot.


Title: Worth All the Pain

Summary: Cameron once told her to let him know if she found out whether love was worth it or not. Kirsten figures it out, but it's too late.

A/N: First Stitchers fanfic! It's a post-S1 thing, but it's pretty much the opposite of how I want S2 to go. Warning: it's angsty (at least I think so). It's also posted on my Tumblr.

* * *

 _I love you, Stretch._

* * *

She's staring at his body. He's unconscious, laying down, the crisp blue-white hospital sheets tucked securely around him. He's hooked up to a machine- more than one, actually. They monitor his heartbeat, blood pressure, brain activity, and everything in between. Then there are the ones that are the only things keeping him alive, keeping his heart beating, if only just.

It's been just over four months, now. Since Cameron stopped his own heart to save the members of the program- to save _her_. And it didn't even work. The licence plate number had been too blurry to make out, and his mind had jumped too quickly to memories with her- _she's everywhere._

Camille has been doing his job- at least, once they had started stitching again. The first time after Cameron was just over two weeks after he had been stabilized, barely. They had stumbled around like they were in the dark without him. They managed, but it wasn't the same. Camille was good, but she hadn't been learning how to use the equipment long enough to be as good as Cameron.

Kirsten took it the hardest. She blamed herself for not being able to help him- if only she hadn't been so distracted by the memories with _herself_ , she could have focused, gotten out of the stitch quicker and been able to save him.

* * *

 _Hey, hey, it's okay. No need to cry, Cupcake._

* * *

He- Cameron -is in a type of medically - induced coma now. His heart could barely take the electrical shocks that brought him back to life, so if he was awake, it might fail. The doctors say that as he heals and rests whilst unconscious, his heart will slowly recover its strength until he's well enough to actually exercise it.

All Kirsten gets out of those conversations is that she won't be hearing him call her a ridiculous nickname any time soon.

Every time she goes to see him at the hospital, she doesn't talk, doesn't say anything whatsoever. She just sits in an uncomfortable plastic chair by his bed, thinking about everything and nothing, maybe holding his hand if nobody else is around- she knows it's stupid, but she just wants- she hopes -that when she interlocks their fingers, he'll respond how he always did before, by tightening his hold on her hand, like he was making sure she was really there, before relaxing it. But now she's the one checking to see if he's real (because that's impossible, no, Cameron can't be in a coma, Cameron who always has a snarky retort to match her dry wit, who drops nicknames like he won't have the chance to use another, who always has a comforting shoulder to lean on and warm words to ease her worries, if only for the time that he's there.

It's just not possible).

Every time his heartbeat speeds up for a moment, every time it seems like he's just barely asleep, so close to coming back to them, her mind automatically flickers back to that stitch, the stitch that got him into this mess. The way her stomach flutters in worry for him reminds her of the feelings she felt while stitched into his mind.

She knows. It wasn't that hard to piece together, not after seeing the inside of his memories and feeling the emotions attached to them. She had asked Camille about it, the nervous butterflies making her feel like she was about to throw up, the joy that came from seeing a smile, the pain of seeing a kiss with someone else.

Her roommate had laughed and asked her who the new man in her life was, if he was hot, and if so, does he have a brother? Kirsten ignores this, rolling her eyes. Camille drops the humor and her lips quirk sadly, like she knows exactly why Kirsten's asking about this ( _but she can't, that's impossible, she didn't tell anyone about that part of Cam's memories_ ).

"It's something we humans call love, dummy."

* * *

 _Geez, Buttercup, you never get this affectionate. What's with the personality reversal?_

* * *

While he's been unconscious, Kirsten has been left with too much free time on her hands. Before, she and Cameron would spend those gaps in her schedule together, doing anything from discussing their latest case over Chinese takeout to having a Doctor Who marathon until four in the morning. But now, not only is she at a loss as to what to do, she doesn't have his laugh or his voice to fill in the silence.

There's really nothing to do but think, mostly about that stitch, something she wished was on her mind less. When she flashes back to his emotionally charged memories- almost every single one was about her -she doesn't know how to react to how she knows he feels.

Love isn't a concept Kirsten is familiar, or comfortable, with, be it romantic, familial or platonic. Sure, she's cares about people, she's been in relationships, she's known people long enough to consider them "friends" but she's never remembered _loving_. Her first taste of it was that first time she was stitched. Peter Brandt loved his girlfriend, Julie, so much that it hurt. Then Lilly Ross was heads-over-heels for her husband, but those feelings paled in comparison to what she felt in Cameron's stitch.

Maybe it was because they knew each other, maybe it was because he loved _her_ , but those emotions were so much more vivid and overwhelming.

And what frightened her was that that feeling- the butterflies, the joy, the pain -that his memories were filled with, the residual emotions, were still there, making her heart skip a beat, four months later.

* * *

 _Is this what love is? Intense connection then... heartbreaking loss?_

 _Maybe._

* * *

By the time that Cameron's been in his coma for six months, Kirsten has swallowed her pride and admitted to herself that the feelings that she's experiencing have never been _just_ leftover from Cam's memories.

These ones, they're real, and all her own. Nothing residual about it.

His heart still isn't getting much better, and while the hospital staff say there's still hope, their sympathetic and optimistic smiles have slowly become more and more forced.

(She swears she saw him smile once, though, when she practically crushed his hand between her own and let one silent tear drip down her cheek before she had a chance to blink it away.)

* * *

 _Is it worth it?_

* * *

Barely a week later, she's rushing to the hospital, hoping that she'll make it before visiting hours end- usually she has plenty of time to see Cameron, but today's sample was almost at its best-by date, and they needed to stitch her in as quickly as they could, before its memories degraded. Luckily, she found the killer of the young man almost as soon as she entered his mind, so it was definitely one of the simpler ones.

Arriving at the front desk of Cameron's ward, she quickly checks in with the receptionist before heading to his room.

Kirsten's just stepping into the room when a long beep rings out, and she starts to hear the shouts of nurses around the corner. Her head snaps towards Cameron, who's lying peacefully in his bed, just like always, except something's different, he's _too_ motionless, and it takes her a moment to register the fact that Cameron's chest isn't going up and down with each breath anymore and the long beep is coming from Cameron's machine, the one that monitors his heartbeat. Where there are usually blips and bumps on the screen, it's just a flat line.

A doctor in messy scrubs pushes her out of the way, shouting for a defibrillator. A squad of nurses follows him in, bumping into Kirsten roughly in their haste to get to Cameron. One of the nurses, who has a slightly chubby, kind face, is tugging on Kirsten's arm, trying to pull her out of the room, telling her that she needs to give the doctors space to work. She can only let out a faint cry of "no!" before she's being ushered away from Cam and back into the waiting room.

* * *

 _'Tis better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all. Tennyson._

 _Do you think he's right?_

* * *

Twenty minutes later, the same nurse from earlier comes into the waiting room, a sorrowful look on her face. She hesitates by the doorframe for a moment, regret tracing her features, before she squares her shoulders and walks over to Kirsten, who looks up from staring at her shoes blankly.

The nurse's grim and mournful expression tells Kirsten everything she needs to know, and twin traitorous tears slip down her face, shattering her emotionless mask. She won't make a scene, not here, not where there are other people, _this is something she needs to process when she's alone,_ with only his recorded voice telling her to leave a message when she calls the phone that he'll never pick up again to keep her company.

* * *

 _I don't know. But if you find out, tell me?_

* * *

The funeral is open casket, and when it's her turn to place a rose on his chest, Kirsten forgoes grabbing one of the dark red blossoms and instead fishes a fistful of buttercups from her purse.

She stands up shakily and walks over to his coffin, stopping in front of it and placing the flowers by his hands.

"I thought you would like buttercups more. I mean, you used to call me that often enough, so... just think of it as something to remember me by."

She's turning to go sit back down when she pauses and twists her head back to look at his pale ( _pale, dead and empty, but that's not right, Cameron is full of life_ ) face.

"I found out. If love is worth it, I mean.

"It is. It may hurt like hell, but it's worth it."

Kirsten walks back to where she was sitting, next to Camille, who puts a comforting arm around her shoulder.

* * *

 _You and I, we had our connection. I may not have seen it until it was too late, but it was there._

 _The heartbreaking loss was real, too. Still is. I'm dealing, but it's in no way over. I don't think it'll_ ever _be over._

 _I love you, Girlfriend._

* * *

*jazz hands* Taadaaaa! In case anyone's confused, those italic bits are kinda like line breaks, I guess. The first three are how Kirsten wishes things would have turned out (he wakes up, tells her everything's fine, essentially how S2 needs to go) and then the others are flashbacks to that conversation in 1x03 about love. The last one is pretty much Kirsten's thoughts at/after the funeral.


End file.
